03 May 2009

Housekeeping

Only the most perceptive among you will notice that I made some changes to TYWKIWDBI last night. Three months ago I changed the format of the blog, increasing the number of posts on the front page from 50 to 100 because that corresponded to the number of posts I was creating each week. At the time I asked for feedback from visitors if the alteration resulted in any problems and heard nothing.

Last night, however, I discovered by chance that one of my favorite bloggers has been unable to access TYWKIWDBI because the front page took too long to load and sometimes even crashed his computer. This blog is image-intensive and also has been incorporating an increasing number of videos which sometimes have to preload, so there may be others who have had problems and simply have given the blog a pass.

Cutting the front page posts to 50 will leave about 4 days' worth here, so once-a-week visitors will now need to find that small-font "older posts" link at the bottom of the page.

The other change I'm beginning to implement is an updating and revision of the "categories" links in the right sidebar. Now that the blog has 3500 posts, some of those categories have become so bloated as to lose their usefulness. The "video" category had grown to over 400, and it was frankly getting difficult even for me to find favorite videos because those posts in particular have few keywords, so if the title was whimsical and there was no descriptive text, the content was hard to find.

I've therefore subdivided the video, leaving the miscellaneous ones in the old category and adding four new categories. The most popular will undoubtedly be "Video - humor" with almost a hundred items already. Another 70 videos are now classified under "Video - science and nature" and 20 more at "Video - movies."

But the real motivation behind the housekeeping was the creation of the final video category - "Video - music." There are some evenings when I'm at the computer with my preferred beverage and want to hear my favorite music videos, 66 of which are now stored in this one convenient link. I had thought about subdividing by genres into rock/classical/country etc, but I'm happy listening to Clapton followed by Dolly Parton followed by Denez Prigent, followed by Cinema Paradiso and Edith Piaf and back to Clapton. So this wasn't done for you-all, but for me.

There will be more housekeeping to come. Anyone who manages a blog knows that it's a never-ending (pleasant) job.

Stan

4 comments:

  1. Dear TYWKIWDBI
    Thank you for cutting the size of your front page. I'm a regular reader with a broadband connection but still found it was taking 20-30 seconds to load. I thought I was the only visitor who felt this way.
    Keep up the excellent work - much appreciated.
    Regards,
    Brian Thomson.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I also appreciate the time and effort you put into your posts - and your housecleaning! thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like everything about your blog except your videos which don't perform for me. When I click their "start" arrows, they are not "live." The best I can get from them when they "work" is a slowed-down soundtrack and no movement forward of the picture. I use a reasonably new iMac.

    All other aggregator-blog videos work fine for me. I do like your blog, though. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. To Anonymous - I'm not geeky enough to speak with authority, but I suspect the problem is less likely to be site-specific than it is that your RAM is inadequate or busy. My front page now typically has about a dozen videos which have to partially preload as soon as the page is opened.

    Another factor is that I think after a period of websurfing bits of the RAM get "occupied" and unavailable for new tasks.

    Try this experiment. The next time you start your computer, try coming to this site first before visiting any others and see if the videos work. Then come back a few hours later and see if they are then slow or unresponsive.

    Others may have other suggestions.

    ReplyDelete

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